Idaho camping, day 1

Today was all about the driving. We followed I-84 east, almost to the edge of the Oregon-Idaho border. Well past the pass, we saw an abandoned factory just off the frontage road that paralleled the freeway. Someone I know has a real fetish for abandoned buildings, so I took the next exit and drove over an old iron railroad bridge to the frontage road. Driving back a couple of miles, we found the factory. There was no fence to cut through or climb over; the only prohibition was a spray-painted stencil of “no trespassing” on a few of the buildings. Really, it’s like they were inviting us in! My guess is that it was an abandoned cement factory, pulling limestone from the adjacent hillsides. Tall concrete silos, massive iron pipelines that could be rotated along the longitudinal axis, twisted piles of metal and lumber, dark dusty underground chambers, the eerie squeak of metal twisting against metal in the wind.

And, delightfully, some really excellent graffiti. Really, this far out in the hinterland, where do people get to practice graffiti enough to do work like this?

We finally stopped for the night at Farewell Bend state park to camp. It was over-groomed, like a golf course, but was a good enough place to park for the evening. Strong winds wanted to pull the pages of my book from between my fingers, and made a campfire impossible. We settled for a salad for dinner and went to bed not long after the sun did. Considering how long it has been since the bus was taken out for a cruise, things went very nicely.